The musings of a politically incorrect dinosaur from a forgotten age where civility was the rule rather than the exception.

Webster

The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions." --American Statesman Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

The Joyless Campaign.......

I saw this on one of the foreign newspapers that I read online. I was kinda surprised to see this featured since the average European still likes President Obama. There have been comments across the blogosphere that this is the nastiest campaign in modern history and seeing how the democrats are playing Chicago politics and we have the various talking heads trying to link the RNC in Tampa with the impending tropical storm that is supposed to hit the gulf coast, I have heard things about "Republicans are partying while people are suffering in New Orleans" trying to tie the RNC to the Bush/Katrina back in 2005. I have also heard that while in the past when one party has their convention, the other party would abstain from campaigning out of respect. This year we have no slowdown of the DNC efforts...we even have Joe Biden in Tampa at the same time....that is kinda tacky.

Barack Obama was swept to the White
House in 2008 by a wave of idealism and inspirational campaigning in
which he encapsulated the mood of the nation with his slogans of ‘Hope’,
‘Change’ and ‘Yes we can’.Then,
his message was a fundamentally positive one. Americans wanted an end
to the Bush era but that almost went without saying. Obama pointed to
his own vision of the country; a post-partisan, post-racial America in
which gridlock in Washington was ended and common-sense centrist
solutions were adopted.What
a difference four years makes. Obama is campaigning ferociously for a
second term – and he is a candidate who would have probably have been
disdained by the Obama of 2008.

Four more years? President Obama, pictured left
in March 2008, and right, at an event in Las Vegas earlier this week;
the Commander-in-Chief is waging a relentlessly negative campaign for
the White House

Drawing crowds: While many came to hear Obama
speak Wednesday at Canyon Springs High School in Las Vegas, it's nowhere
near the numbers he was reaching in 2008

Obama is waging a relentlessly
negative campaign of changing the subject from the one that,
overwhelmingly, most Americans care about – the economy. Every week
there is a new issue his campaign seizes on, preferring to talk about
something, anything other than jobs and 8.3 per cent unemployment.While
Obama is still drawing sizable crowds, they are nothing like the size
of those who flocked to see him in 2008. In Las Vegas, Obama held a
rally in a high school before more than 2,000 people but there was space
for plenty more.On the
outskirts of Manchester, New Hampshire on Monday morning, Mitt Romney
and Paul Ryan attracted more than 3,000 people who patiently queued in
lines across a field to be searched by the Secret Service.

More...

Crowd size is not everything –
as Obama himself could attest after losing in the 2008 New Hampshire
primary to Hillary Clinton even though he had attracted unprecedented
numbers to his events, eclipsing the former First Lady by two or three
to one.But the difference
between the numbers Obama is attracting now compared to four years ago
should be a cause of deep concern to his campaign. More
significantly, the mood of the crowds is different. There is a
sullenness, even resentment, that was not present in 2008. Ask an Obama
supporter about their man and as often as not you will get a few words
about him and then a demeaning attack on Romney or Ryan.

Bright eyes: Then-senator Obama is pictured speaking during a town hall meeting in San Antonio, Texas in March of 2008

Popularity: The president's likability surged during his speech at the Victory Column in Berlin in 2008

They are taking their cue from
the candidate himself. Obama used not to mention Romney by name. In Las
Vegas, he did so nine times. And
while he was careful to call him ‘Governor Romney’ and not stoop to the
kind of attacks he has left to his campaign and its allies (such as
accusing him of being a felon or linking him to the death of a woman
from cancer), the contempt he has for his opponent was almost visceral.

Significantly, the mood of the
crowds is different. There is a sullenness, even resentment, that was
not present in 2008. Ask an Obama supporter about their man and as often
as not you will get a few words about him and then a demeaning attack
on Romney or Ryan.

The crowd sensed it. When Obama
mentioned ‘Republicans in Congress’, they began to boo loudly. Obama
attempted to quiet them: ‘No, no, no, no, no, don’t boo – vote,’ he
said. ‘That’s right. Vote.’But
the crowd had taken their cue from Obama – the booing reflected the
tone he had adopted. It was clever politics – whip up the crowd, then
make a high-minded appeal for civility while at the same time trying to
turn their anger into action.Obama
has taken on Ryan by name – presidential candidates, never mind
incumbent presidents, don’t normally stoop to mentioning the bottom half
of the opposing ticket.In 2008, the Obama campaign was full
of endless possibilities and expectations of a bright new horizon. This
time, it’s a joyless slog. And there’s something else: Obama now tends
to look emptily past rather than at his audiences. It’s as if the light
in his eyes has gone out.Obama
has seized on the bone-headed 'legitimate rape' remarks of Todd Akin, a
previously obscure figure running for the US Senate in Missouri, to try
to make them central to his campaign. At
a New York fundraiser on Wednesday, Obama joked about referred 'the
Senator of Missouri, Mr Akin' (he's a congressman) who 'sits on the
House Committee on Science and Technology but somehow missed science
class'.

The Obama campaign
appears intent on turning the Democratic convention into one long gloat
about Akin's comments in the hope of driving women voters away from
Romney. Obama advisers are even talking of Akin being "on the ticket"
with Romney and Ryan.In
Las Vegas, a campaign event and a stridently partisan one at that,
Obama’s lectern was decorated with the presidential seal. Back in 2010,
Obama’s then press secretary Robert Gibbs said that ‘at strictly
political events we would not use’ the seal, which is a symbol of the
office of the presidency not of a political candidate.Another
remarkable thing is that many of those at Obama’s events – like many
people across the country - are not listening to him. In Reno on Tuesday
evening, it was at times hard to follow what Obama was saying because
of the chatter.

Knowing smile: Then-presidential hopeful Obama attends a rally at the Community College of Beaver County in Pennsylvania in 2008

A number of those attending
seemed only to want to get a picture of themselves with Obama speaking
in the background. In 2008, audiences would be rapt, almost mesmerised,
when Obama spoke. At Romney and Ryan events there is near silence and
many an intent, furrowed brow as the case for change is made.In
Las Vegas, the crowd chanted ‘Yes We Can’ before Obama appeared but it
sounded like a dirge rather than the perky, upbeat chant of 2008. It was
so different that one local reporter even walked over to me to ask what
they were chanting.Behind
Obama was emblazoned the word ‘Forward’, a slogan once used by Josef
Stalin. But at the core of Obama’s case is the notion that President
George W. Bush’s policies are responsible for the mess America is in.
Listening to him at times it is as if the last four years never
happened.Obama’s campaign
schedule reveals a lot about how he seeks victory in November. Last
week, he spend three days in Iowa and held nine events. Iowa has six
electoral college votes of the 270 Obama needs to win.

Easy does it: President Obama gestures as he is
interrupted by a protester as he speaks at a campaign event at Canyon
Springs High School in Nevada earlier this week

50 shades of grey: The president shows signs of wear and hair with white and grey strands

On Saturday, Obama held two
events in New Hampshire, which has four Electoral College votes and on
Tuesday and Wednesday he was in Nevada, which has six. Obama, moreover,
won Nevada by more than 12 percentage points in 2008.What
does this tell is? That Obama is on the defensive and knows the only
way he can win re-election is by the narrowest of margins, by ‘slicing
and dicing’ – his own pejorative term – and eking out a 51 to 49 per
cent victory, crawling across the line to 270 electoral college votes.Perhaps
the most striking thing of all is Obama’s demeanour. He has visibly
greyed over the past four years but that happens to most world leaders.
What is more noteworthy is his lugubrious expression and the fact that
he grimaces much more often than he smiles

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